Best read by 28/02/2007

As if I don't have enough to do with my time and now I'm supposed to do another post for Freya because she got the new Phoenix Wright game for the Nintendo DS. I won't be seeing much of her for a few weeks and neither will you probably. And I have mentioned to her that I am at least as busy as she. I spent an hour working on the Victory today and only managed to add three pieces. It's not the gluing or the nailing, but the endless sanding that seems to take the most time. My boss Ken says it will take me about 150 lunch hours to finish the timber portions and then another 100 to do the rigging. I guess that equates to exactly one year. I don't mind; it appeals to my meticulous nature, but the fact is I don't have the room on my desk for the thing with all the drawings I'm supposed to be doing as well. And all my jobs lately have looked like this:
Well, I hope that whomever moves into this penthouse apartment appreciates the headache caused to the poor truss designer who engineered his roof!

I know this isn't a ship-building or roof designing blog and frankly it's your loss, but the point of all the preamble is to demonstrate an important factor dictating my cooking style. Time is that factor. Freya ogles cookbooks all day and late into the night. She plans what she wants to make during the next three months. She organises menus and plans dinners that we probably will never find time for. She makes lists of ingredients and utensils she'd like to acquire. This all suits her just fine because she's passionate about food. I suppose if my expanding stomach is anything to go by, so am I. The difference is that I want food and I want it now. I don't care who gets in my way! If I were in charge of a food blog there wouldn't be any pictures on it because there's nothing worse than staring at a plate of food that's rapidly cooling wanting to eat it, but having to wait. I cook food that's fast and simple, the antithesis of my writing style.

You’ve probably figured all of this out for yourselves from my previous posts. You probably also know that I don’t pledge allegiance to food porn or food obsessions. Food fads and dietary trends don’t really interest me at all. A fad is flawed by its very nature. Popular thought is historically incorrect thought. Classics are classics because they are effective. A plain old-fashioned pork chop is good without some pompous chef slopping a bunch of mango salsa on top. The mango salsa may be good and I’m happy to give it a go, not for £25.00, but I’ll give it a go. I guarantee you though that twenty years from now this will be considered naff retro food but people will still be making plain old-fashioned pork chops.

This is why I sing the praises of chefs like Justin Wilson and Jeff Smith. They were committed to classic and neo-classical cuisine. In fact, next to my side of the bed you will find a book called The Frugal Gourmet Cooks Three Ancient Cuisines. This book is loaded with what can only be described as culinary anthropology. Among thousands of revelations in this book we learn that frozen food was invented in China several thousand years ago for a hungry emperor who wanted his dumplings on demand, Nero ate leek soup every day to ensure his voice was “clear and sonorous”, and that the first cookbook was written by a Greek in the fourth century B.C.

I like trying new foods, even experimental foods, but with billions of recipes from hundreds of countries, some originating several millennia ago, I don’t feel the need to reach deep in my pocket to stroke the egos of so-called innovators. I’m always disappointed when I eat out. The food is never consistent and I inevitably have to compromise. Moreover, I instantly dislike anyone in uniform especially when they’re asking for money.

And now the point of my post and if it seems like a non-sequitor at first, please bear with me for a bit.

Sunday afternoon is, as previously stated, a day to eat what’s simple and fast. This is great for me! I like the freedom of cooking off the cuff. I enjoy going to the fridge and grabbing “stuff” and seeing what develops, but with an emphasis on simplicity. There is nothing new or revolutionary going on in the kitchen on a Sunday, just good old fashioned cooking the way it’s been done for thousands of years. I try to use up the food that is nearly inedible, which is difficult sometimes because I don’t have faith in expiration dates. I think that sell-by and use-by dates are just a measure introduced by commerce to limit liability. For instance, yoghurt is the result of primitive methods to preserve milk and I once ate some a year past its’ use-by date with no ill effects! I use what needs using and I feel like a Frugal Gourmet.

This past Sunday was like any other (apart from the zucchini bread I’d made before 9AM). I cleaned out the fridge taking out the old vegetables and a container of organic prawns. I figured it was the perfect foundation for a stir-fry and some wontons. While cutting up the vegetables I made Freya the mashed potatoes she’d been begging for since Friday and served them up with fish fingers and beans. She was content. I went back to my vegetables, cutting and chopping, mixing a variety of items for three separate dishes.

The key with most cooking is timing and Asian food is no exception. In fact, it’s probably the most crucial element of all since the food is meant to be fresh, hot, and perfectly cooked. It is therefore very important to consider the density of individual ingredients when chopping the ingredients and when adding them to the wok. It is also an important part of the overall method to avoid waste. In accordance with this principle I use every part of the vegetables I cook. As an example, to use up the stocky bits of broccoli, I slice them into thin strips and use them as a fresh substitute for bamboo shoots (see photo above). I also prep seasonings for several dishes at once as this saves time and effort and minimizes waste.

In the end I made three unique dishes and my total prep and cooking time was approximately twenty minutes. I used up some vegetables which probably would have gone to the compost bin otherwise. Best of all, I thoroughly enjoyed traditional food cooked traditionally, I didn’t compromise, and I wasn’t disappointed.

RICE
Make sure you put this on first. It’s terrible to realise you’ve forgotten this five minutes before everything else is finished. Once made, it will stay fresh and hot for a very long time. Lots of people seem to have difficulty making rice, even Delia. I don’t understand why as it’s the staple ingredient in the diets of 2/3 of the world population. To make perfect rice sticky enough to eat with chopsticks, mix 1 part plain long grain rice (not easy cook) to 1¾ parts water in a pan. Bring just to the boiling point, turn down the stove to the lowest setting, cover, and let cook for 15 minutes. Turn off heat and leave on hotplate until ready to serve. Save leftover rice to make fried rice at a later date as this works best with cooked rice which has gone slightly dry.

WONTONS
Ingredients:
10 Medium cooked and shelled prawns
1 Small chili
3 Spring onions
20g Beansprouts
1 Clove garlic
1 Teaspoon fresh ginger
1 Tablespoon soy sauce
2 Teaspoons cornflour
8 Wonton wrappers (Very hard to get in the UK, these are not spring-roll wrappers. You can make your own, but my results are always hit and miss.)

METHOD
Mix soy sauce and cornflour in a cup until the cornflour is completely dissolved. Chop all remaining ingredients very finely and mix in a pan. Add soy sauce/cornflour and place on preheated hotplate. Cook just until sauce thickens and remove immediately from heat. Place a small spoonful of the mixture in the middle of the wonton wrapper folding all corners up to meet in the middle. I seal them by dipping the entire thing in a mixture of one beaten egg and one tablespoon water. Fry in moderately hot oil until the outside is brown and crispy, about 30 seconds.

SPICY GREEN BEANS WITH GARLIC AND CHILI
Ingredients:
100g Fresh green beans (make your kids cut the stems off, but leave the tails)
1 Clove garlic julienned
1 Red chili julienned
1 Teaspoon sesame oil
Pinch of salt

METHOD
Par-boil the beans until the outside is slightly tender (In an effort to avoid waste, I boiled these in the same water I cooked Freyas potatoes in. Don’t do this! The starch in the water stuck to my pan.) Drain thoroughly. Add to hot wok with a bit of peanut oil and all remaining ingredients. Stir-fry (chow) until beans are tender through, but retain a bit of bite.

CHOWED VEGETABLES
Ingredients:
1 Head broccoli chopped into bite-sized pieces
1 Carrot cut into thin shavings
1 Onion coarsely chopped
1 Pepper sliced
Water chestnuts sliced (Mother-in-law won’t have this. She calls them raw potatoes.)
25g Dried mushrooms rehydrated (save water for the sauce)
100g beansprouts
1 Bok choy
2 Cloves garlic diced
2 Teaspoons grated ginger
2 Tablespoon cornflour
3 Tablespoons soy sauce
1 Tablespoon sherry or equivalent
½ Cup water from mushrooms
White pepper to taste
Peanut oil

METHOD
Mix soy sauce and cornflour in a cup and set aside. Heat peanut oil in a wok or frying pan. Add garlic and cook until browned removing immediately before burning. When wok is very hot, add carrots and broccoli cooking for about 2 minutes. Add ginger, onions, peppers, and chestnuts cooking for an additional 2-3 minutes. Add mushrooms and beansprouts cooking for another minute. Add all remaining ingredients and cook until sauce thickens. Serve immediately.

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Skating On Thin Ice

I know, it's a cute but corny title. However, it sums up my feelings about this unusual fish. Skate is not like cod or salmon or kippers. It is flat, very flat, like a one-dimensional diamond, with creamy white flesh on either side of a zither type central bone structure.
I had a craving for Skate Wings when I saw them on the fish counter. They looked pinkly pearlescent amongst the silvery grey bream and the brown prepared crabs – somewhat ethereal and, as I thought, quite tasty too.
I shoved them in the freezer for a rainy day (and we’ve had plenty of those to choose from recently) and decided yesterday to haul them back out again for supper.
There are a couple of traditional ways of preparing skate wings: both involve butter but one is black butter and the other is a caper butter. I unwittingly made a combination of the two after taking my eyes of the prize (or butter) for more than a couple of minutes whilst chopping vegetables.
Skate is no hassle to cook. It simply requires flouring and frying in a little vegetable oil for a couple of minutes each side or poaching in a Court Bouillon. It is not, however, hassle free eating. If you enjoy the sensation of swans quills in your mouth then you will adore skate. If, like my husband, you do not, you will end up with a plate of brutally dismembered skate, the quills having been irretrievably mixed into the delicate flesh. I rapidly discovered that there is a method though to eating skate. You have to gently ease the flesh from the cartilage type bones, a bit like removing the chocolate cream from an Oreo cookie, then flip it over and repeat. Coney and Max enjoyed the central boney structure far more than we did. It was their treat. I don't think they cared much for the Capers though: Max probably prefers his in brine rather than salt.
Don't misunderstand me. The flavour of Skate is delicate, creamy and rather special. Sometimes though, I just feel like diving straight in and chowing down hard rather than daintily picking at my food. In fact, I always feel like that!
I served it with roasted tomatoes (which I love but I forgot that Paul doesn't), and the remainder of the weekend vegetables tossed in a honey and balsamic vinegar dressing. I'm not a veggie person normally but these were really good. Plus, I used up all the leftover vegetables from Pauls Sunday Night Stir Fry so this constitutes my Leftover Tuesday (held, this month by Rachel at Rachels Bite) Entry - score!
If Skate sounds like your aquatic cup of tea, here is the recipe:
SKATE WITH CAPER SAUCE AND CRISP VEGETABLES WITH HONEY DRESSING - serves 2
Ingredients:
2 Skate Wings, seasoned on both sides
Some seasoned flour
1 Tablespoon Capers
2 Finely Chopped Shallots
1 Tablespoon Chopped Parsley
40g Butter, cut into cubes
Juice from Half a Lemon
Salt and Pepper
150ml White Wine
For the Vegetables:
Use a selection of crisp vegetables, I used carrots, green beans, spring onion (red onion would be good) and courgette, cut into thinnish batons.
Some Olive Oil
Salt, Pepper
1 Tablespoon Runny Honey
1 Tablespoon Balsamic Vinegar
1 Teaspoon Grain Mustard
METHOD:
Heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a large frying pan over medium high heat. You will probably need to cook the wings in two batches because they are quite large and don't shrink up much when cooking (probably due to it's boney internal structure which I may have mentioned).
Dust the skate wings in the flour and fry in the oil for a couple of minutes each side. Leave to one side on a plate.
In the same pan, gently cook the shallot and capers until they smell fragrant. Pour over the lemon juice and white wine and season with pepper only.
Bring to a rapid boil and reduce down to half, maybe 4 or 5 minutes.
Whisk in the butter, a cube or two at a time until the sauce is translucently creamy. Taste for seasoning, it may need more lemon, some salt or more pepper.
Stir in the chopped parsley and return the skate wings to the pan. Turn down to very low and cover with a lid.
In another frying pan, heat the olive oil and gently saute the vegetables for about 5 minutes.
In a small bowl, whisk together the honey, balsamic vinegar and mustard. Pour over the vegetables. Taste for seasoning.
Serve in two piles on the centre of your plates.
Gently remove the skate wings from pan using a fish slice (so that's what it's for!) and place, restaurant style, atop the vegetables and serve.

And as a footnote, I would like to thank my American Aunt Marie (Pauls Aunt actually, but I've adopted her) for the foodie bits which we received today. I am particularly enthralled with the wet and dry cup measurer as half my cookbooks are American and the old magazines. How on earth did you know that I liked cooking and vintage cooking at that??? I try to keep it a secret.

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Now We Are One...

And what better to way to celebrate such a momentous occasion than by baking a batch of Hummingbird Muffins...
But firstly, here is a reminder of my first, slightly gauche post, back in the days before I even used photography to illustrate my writing!
So much has happened in the last 12 months or so. Paul has become a fully fledged, paid up in advance, badge-wearing member of WATKT (and some might say the superior writer; the Batman to my Robin if you will) and now has his own fan club (comprising three members: Paul, me and his Mom).
Last year was spent with the two of us flailing around in a cloud of financial and emotional despair. Two characters who were very important to us passed away. Benji, the spearhead of this blog, the canine gourmandiser, was the original influence for WATKT. Sure, you might say he was just a dog, but he was much more than that and anyone who has had a pet will understand. His picture remains on our overloaded kitchen shelves as a constant reminder of the little dog who devoted his life to food and to his stomach, regardless of whether he was filling it with leftover chili, roast chicken or Ben and Jerrys Mint Choc-Chunk Ice Cream.
Pauls youngest brother Lee died last February, after fighting cancer for as long as I've known Paul, which is over five years. Paul uses this blog to share his evocative childhood reminiscences, and I know that it makes him sad that he can't share those special memories with Lee anymore. However, we have both had the pleasure of cooking for Lee, most notably when we visited last February; Pauls Pig in a Trough being Lees favourite. It seems that memories start and finish around the dining table. That particular dish will always remind Paul of his brother.

The new year has given us great hope for the future in all aspects and we look forward to seeing what the future brings.
I also want to thank everyone who has stopped by and taken the time to leave us encouraging comments. On some days, this is what drives me on to keep posting. Paul and I have had great fun participating in the cooking events and have made lots of friends. Thanks, y'all.
This blog is one of my greatest achievements though; it symbolises that I am finally on the right track for my future goals, which involve cooking and writing and I hope that at some point I can find the opportunity to make this a full time career. For now, I sit at my desk, in a chilly office, and dream up the next hair-brained scheme (soup for five days, anyone?). I am considering a month of offal but we shall see...

"Enough of your sentimental, mushy blah Freya, where are the Muffins? That's all we're interested in - the MUFFINS!!"
I know, and who can blame you? These Hummingbird Muffins are perhaps the most delicious, most moreish and moistest of any cake I have ever made. They contain crushed pineapple, banana, carrot, coconut, cinnamon - see, healthy AND tasty!
The Hummingbird Cake is a Southern Classic that gets its name from the noise emitted from your mouth when you eat it: supposedly a contended hum. We had several joyous umms and ooohs and mmm-mmms but no hums. Still, until the much rarefied OoohingBird of Outer Mongolia is found, the cake shall remain devoted to the Hummingbird. Incidentally, this is also my entry for Muffin Monday, held by Elena over at the rather originally named SqPixels.

The recipe originally referred to them as cupcakes but I think they have a rather Muffiny feel about them. The fruit makes them seem like a healthy breakfast treat and without the rich buttercream icing, they look almost virtuous. Believe me, they are not.
HUMMINGBIRD MUFFINS - makes 12
Ingredients:
125g Plain Flour
1 teaspoon Baking Powder
1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon
125g Caster Sugar (I used Golden Caster)
115ml Safflower Oil (but I used Sunflower because that's all I had!)
2 Eggs
150g Mashed Banana (about one and a half bananas of large girth)
Grated Zest of an Orange (I used one of the Sevilles left in the fridge)
60g Grated Carrot
90g Tinned Pineapple Crushed (we used fresh because Paul was using it for smoothies)
60g Dessicated Coconut
METHOD:
Preheat oven to 175c.
Line your muffin tin with muffin cases.
Sieve together the flour, cinnamon and baking powder. Set to one side
In another bowl, cream together the oil and the sugar until pale and fluffy. Because you are using oil instead of butter, this will take no time at all!
Gradually beat in the eggs.
Stir in the dry ingredients gradually until thoroughly amalgamated.
Gently fold in the banana, orange zest, grated carrot, crushed pineapple and coconut.
Spoon out into the muffin cases.
Bake for 20-25 minutes. You will smell when they are almost done as the kitchen will be filled with a wonderful spicy, fruity aroma.
These taste best of all when warm but Paul said they were still good and moist the next day.

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When Was My Last Bread Post?

(Freyas Note: I've passed on Weekend Herb Blogging responsibilities to Paul this week. WHB is hosted by Anna at Annas Cool Finds this week.)
Occasionally I encounter a fellow American while I’m “out and about” (how Midwestern). It’s usually hard to pick out the accent in a throng of people as there are certain British dialects which sound similar, Irish for example. Today I had one such encounter. This time it wasn’t the accent that gave it away, but rather the vocabulary. The word that piqued my interest was zucchini.

The equivalent here is courgette and while I occasionally hear eggplant instead of aubergine, I never hear the word zucchini. I personally prefer zucchini to courgette because it’s just more fun. Ironically I was looking for courgettes (thinking zucchini) when I heard this woman say zucchini.

In my current bid to recapture my childhood, a recurring theme in my posts on Freyas blog, I had decided to make zucchini bread. I had everything in the cupboard to do a great recipe from the classic book Beard on Bread (James Beard 1973) except for zucchini. Now my mom will wonder why I haven’t used her recipe from the family cookbook, but I’m claiming immunity under the double jeopardy clause as this recipe has already been used once this year. Besides, it’s only because of my mom that I like zucchini bread or rather despite my moms attempts to put me off zucchini forever.

When I was a kid, my mom and her friend Gin had garden plots at LaCrosse Floral. They would go to the garden just about every day in the summer and pull weeds while my brother Mark and I would play under a big willow tree on the property. Occasionally they would rope us into carrying buckets of water around, but for the most part we were free to play under that tree with no obligation. We didn’t realise in the early weeks that we were simply buying on credit. We weren’t informed of the terms of the contract either. It was only when presented with massive sacks full of green beans to top and tail that we realised that we were not only paying the debt back, but at a massive APR, the monetary equivalent of which would be around 78.9%.

Hour after hour we’d sit in the basement while our friends rode bikes, flew kites, and played baseball. Fingers green, knuckles aching, skin dry from the little fuzz on fresh beans that soaks up moisture like a sponge, we would stagger outside to play in the last remaining hour of daylight. The whole process would begin the next day and the day after that. I’ll tell you something too, there’s no way to efficiently cut the ends off of beans. You line them up thinking it’s faster to hack at twenty beans at a time, but this just isn’t the case. One at a time is the easiest method, albeit monotonous.

Yes, beans were abundant. Fortunately I loved them and still do. (Ros may think Goon is weird for dipping beans in honey, but I love them with Ketchup!) The only other thing that grew in that garden was something I wasn’t as fond of, zucchini. I hated it! When I was a kid, before the days of lazy parenting, or at least during the awkward phasing in period of lazy parenting, not liking food didn’t mean not eating food. Since beans freeze and zucchini doesn’t I was condemned to zucchini every single summer day.

My mom did make attempts at preserving these horrible marrows. I don’t remember them all, but I’m sure she canned some and I know for a fact that she even managed to make zucchini powder. I remember it being in a little bottle and having it sprinkled over food in place of other seasonings, you know, the kind that actually tasted of something. While her attempts to maintain this particular method of torture throughout the winter months proved unsuccessful for the most part, at least her ability to disguise the device of torture was more refined. The most effective of her ruses was, you guessed it, zucchini bread!

I remember the taste and texture and how great this bread was cold with a layer of butter. I also remember that there was a lot of this when I was growing up. A funny thing happens when you use vegetables as the foundation of a bread dough or cake batter (and make no mistake, the word bread is only used to make this seem healthier. Zucchini Bread is actually a cake.). A natural sweetness and moisture is imparted into the finished product that can’t be achieved by any other means. The reason is that vegetables have a very high water content, but for the most part retain their shape during cooking. When added to a bread or cake the cell walls of the vegetable don’t break down until the baking process nears completion. This means that the moisture in the vegetable is delivered gradually through the process of osmosis over several days. The addition of a vegetable to bread or cake means the finished product will stay edible for several days longer. Want proof? Carrot cake!

Zucchini bread is very similar to and, in my opinion, better than carrot cake. It’s only the colour and absence of alliteration that prevents it from capturing the adoration by the masses currently heaped on the altar of carrot cake. Freya disagrees with me on this point, but she would, being slavishly devoted to the cream cheese frosting and the “cute little frosting carrot on top” that garishly garnishes the iconic carrot cake. But it just ain’t fair! Zucchini bread is carrot cakes ugly little brother. He doesn’t get the chicks and he wouldn’t be caught dead in the same outlandish wardrobe, but by gum, he will prove himself and he’ll do it on his own merits!

CARL GOHS’ ZUCCHINI BREAD (From James Beard Beard on Bread)
Ingredients:
3 Eggs
2 Cups granulated sugar (a lot, even by 1970’s standards)
1 Cup vegetable oil (I used sunflower)
2 Cups grated, peeled raw zucchini
3 Teaspoons vanilla extract
3 Cups plain flour
1 Teaspoon salt
1 Teaspoon baking soda
1/3 Teaspoon baking powder
3 Teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 Cup coarsely chopped walnuts (I omitted this)


METHOD
Beat the eggs until light and foamy. Add the sugar, oil, zucchini, and vanilla and mix lightly but well. Combine the flour, salt, soda, baking powder, and cinnamon and add to the egg-zucchini mixture. Stir until well blended, add nuts, and pour into 2 greased loaf tins. Bake in a preheated oven (350°F/175°C) for one hour. Cool on a rack before serving.

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Soup - Day 5 (at last!)

I am not ashamed to tell you that I am a bit sick of soup now. For five days straight we have eschewed regular meals in favour of liquefied meals. I know that you have all enjoyed reading about our five days of soup, but really. Imagine eating just soup for 120 hours. Not literally 120 hours, obviously that would surely give us some kind of Guinness Book of Records award, but every, single night for five days! What was I thinking? Last night all I wanted for dinner was Mashed Potato.

“Can’t we have mashed potato?” I begged Paul, imploringly.

“No! We said five days of soup and that’s what we’re gonna do.”

"Mashed Potato Soup?"

"No."

And now, here I sit, Friday night beverage in hand, ice cubes chinking, writing about our final soup of the week.

Surely, I hear you cry, you must have made something startlingly brilliant and original, like lobster bisque with a crabs roe foam or Foie Gras Consomme garnished with the corneas of a Wagyu Cow. Actually, we went for something far heartier, tastier and considerably cheaper than that: Black Bean Soup.

As an indication of how uneducated the British palate still is to Tex Mex food, the bag of black beans, purchased at the weekend, were in the reduced bin. Unfortunately, I suspect it was due to the hugely inflated price of them (£4.99 – equivalent to nearly 10 bucks!) that was the cause of their fall from specialist aisle darling to dumpster bin reject.

Still, Tescos loss is our gain. The soup was a breeze to make, prepped in just 10 minutes flat. 90 minutes later and the soup was ready to serve. I didn’t even use a recipe, I simply prepared them as I do Puy Lentils, but adding a couple of red hot dried chilis and a good pinch of freshly ground toasted cumin seeds.

When ready it resembled crude oil, studded with tiny, shiny pieces of obsidian. A most beautiful soup, made even more stunning with a sprinkling of spring onion, coriander and sour cream.

Paul said that this was his favourite soup of the week and not Day 1 after all. Well, if it has the words Tex or Mex in the recipe, he's happy. Incidentally, this is my entry for A Veggie Ventures Soup's On event. There have been so many great soup recipes so far!

BLACK BEAN SOUP serves 4-6

Ingredients:
400g Black Beans, soaked overnight
1 Large Onion, finely chopped
2 Cloves Garlic, finely chopped
1 Stick Celery, finely chopped
2 Teaspoons Cumin
2 Dried Chilis (small, hot ones)
1.5 Litres Beef Stock (I used cubes)
20g Lard or equivalent vegetable oil
1 Teaspoon Dried Oregano or Epazote
Salt
Spring Onion, Sour Cream, grated Cheddar for garnishing
METHOD:

Drain the soaked beans and rinse well.
In a large saucepan or stock pot, melt the lard and gently cook the onion and garlic until soft. Add the celery and cook for a couple minutes more.
Stir in the beans, chilis, cumin and oregano. DO NOT SALT AT THIS STAGE!
Cover with the stock and bring to the boil.
Turn down to a gently simmer, cover and leave for about an hour and a half.
The stock will have turned a rich, black colour when ready and the beans will be tender.
Now you can add the salt. If you salt the beans before cooking, they will stay hard.
Once you have seasoned it to your satisfaction, serve in deep bowls sprinkled with chopped spring onion, sour cream and grated cheese. Paul split taco shells, covered them with grated cheese and grilled them as a large 'garnish' for his soup!

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Yet Another Meme

Memetics has been labelled by critics as cocktail party pseudo science. The kind of thing the middle class discussed to sound intellectual. When I first read about Memetics I saw it as an interesting analogue of existing sociological principles which have fascinated me for years. Memetics did for sociology what A Brief History of Time did for astrophysics, making it accessible to those who otherwise would have a rough time conceptualising some of the fundamentals.

The greatest failing of Memetics is that it is simply a metaphor and not a new science. As such, it will never develop a following in any professional circles and is doomed to be a relic of pop-culture. Now as passé as membership in the Church of the Sub-Genius, Zendik Farm, or New Labour, Memetics has followed its’ own prescribed path and mutated to assure its’ own self-replication. It now takes the form of blogging “memes”, sort of a 21st century chain letter for exhibitionists and voyeurs. Naturally we’re happy to fill one out and pass it on!

For those interested in further study, I would recommend Thought Contagion by Aaron Lynch.

1. I have a literal fear of zombies. Not just the people who go through life without purpose, but the walking dead. I know it’s irrational, but I can’t get over it. I’ve studied every zombie movie, book, and video game trying to learn as much as I can, hoping that I’ll retain the information when the attack comes. Most people have an image of their personal dream house. Mine includes steel shuddered windows, a central courtyard for arable crops, gun towers, a “last-hope” bunker, and 10-15 years supply of rations. Ludicrous yes, but Freya still has to hold my hand when I play Resident Evil.

2. I used to have hair and Freya used to like Batman…a lot!

3. a.) I can say the ABCs backwards AND forward. b.) I failed freshmen math despite my dad having a PhD in mathematics partially because of learning my ZYXs during class time rather than my A2 + B2 = C2.

4. I’ve lived in five time-zones.

5. Freya and I intend to donate our bodies to the Forensic Anthropology Center in Knoxville, Tennessee for forensic crime research (After we die of course. I certainly wouldn't go there while alive. Knoxville that is!). The work they do there is neither pleasant nor pretty, but it has done more for the cause of solving violent crime than any other research facility in the world. This is the only place doing this form of research and in a world so lacking of justice, it is vital for their work to continue.
Freyas note: Julia from A Slice of Cherry Pie passed this onto me! Paul and I are not entirely au fait with these, but apparently you have to pass this meme onto five other people, somewhat like one of those letters that promise you piles of money, so, to perpetuate this chain, I am passing this onto five other food bloggers:
Shaun, Winter Skies, Kitchen Aglow
Ulrike at Kuchenlatein
D-Man at Sourdough Monkey Wrangler (if for no other reason than his cool name)
Joyce at Foodie Fumblings
Katie at Thyme for Cooking
Hopefully none of you guys have been meme'd already. If you have, then please be civil and gently direct us towards your already meme'd post. If not, then be a love and tell us five things about yourself and then find five bloggers who haven't been meme'd (this is the hard part!).

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Soup - Day 4 (Paul's Back!)

That’s right! I got home late, took the kitchen over, made up a brand new soup on the fly, and only missed ten minutes of Battlestar Galactica (War of the Gods Pt. 2). Freya was sending me text messages all day with soup suggestions in a desperate bid to dissuade me from cooking tonight. I told her that I was determined to make dinner and nothing would stop me.

I didn’t have much time to think about soup at work. I had some big quotes and redesign work due out not to mention the planking to glue on the scale model of the HMS Victory. My boss did have a look in my office to make sure I was busy and he pointed out that drilling the holes for the masts will prove to be a bit of a pain. “And don’t even get me started on the rigging!” I only knew that the soup should have beans and tomatoes as they have been conspicuously absent from the rest of the soups this week.

I stood in the middle of the kitchen while Freya finished off the batter for some Hummingbird Muffins, which I was surprised to learn contain no hummingbirds. I decided that a twist on goulash would be fun and novel.

I didn’t have any meat thawed apart from the Kielbasa that Peter brought me from Poland (I showed him some pictures of the last thing I made with this sausage and he said something like, “Yes, always about food with you.”). Good sausage is the foundation of many of my favourite meals. I love bratwurst, mortadella, chorizo, and a really good kosher all-beef frankfurter and would almost always choose one of these options over steak. When using sausage in soup you know it will always be tender and will offer up its flavour without much of a fight. The hardship in my house is getting Freya to eat the meat in soup, but I don’t argue with her or even give her disparaging looks while I dutifully eat the leftover sausage in her bowl.

The first thing I always do when Freya makes goulash is prepare the dough for dumplings. There’s nothing worse than finishing up prepping dinner and realising you forgot to make the rice, or pasta, or in this case dumplings. Goulash dumplings aren’t like the big stodgy dumplings made with suet that you might find in a beef stew. These dumplings are small and firm with a lot of flavour. The dough requires a minimum of half an hour rising time which is why I make them first.

The remaining ingredients and preparation are simple and straightforward. If you’re a regular reader of my contributions to this blog you will notice a theme in all my recipes. I love frugality! The idea of using the dregs in the fridge to make a delicious meal is very appealing to me. Freya says it’s because I’m cheap, but I can live with that as long as I can impress her with the results. Tonight was my biggest triumph! She even said this was the best soup this week! I thought soup 1 was the best, but this definitely deserves second prize. I think you’ll enjoy it too.

PAULS PATENTED PAPRIKA SOUP
Ingredients:
Dumplings:
3 Tablespoons ‘00’ flour
2 Fresh eggs
1 Teaspoon hot Bavarian mustard
A medium bunch of parsley finely chopped
1 Teaspoon sea salt
2 Grinds of pepper
Soup:
100g Kielbasa or chorizo sliced or cubed
1 Tin or 450g soaked/drained beans (I used butter beans)
2 Onions quartered and sliced thin
2 Peppers cubed
2 Heaped teaspoons Pimenton (smoky hot paprika)
2-3 Tablespoons peanut oil
2 Teaspoons salt, more or less to taste
1 Tin chopped organic tomatoes
½ Pint beef stock

METHOD (Dumplings)
Mix all ingredients until a sticky loose dough forms. Cover and allow to stand for at least 30 minutes.

METHOD (Soup)
Pour oil in a deep sauté pan over medium heat. Add sausage and allow to cook while prepping onions. Add onions and salt and allow to sauté while prepping the peppers. Add peppers and paprika and sweat over medium low heat for about five minutes. Add tomatoes and beef stock, cover and simmer over low heat for about 20 minutes. Add beans and turn heat to high. Working with two spoons, form small quenelles with the dumpling batter dropping them into the soup until all dough is used. Allow soup to come to the boil, reduce heat to medium low, cover and simmer for an additional 10 minutes. The dumplings will approximately double in size and then shrink a little when uncovered. Serve with a dollop of sour cream, crème fraiche, or if you’re a food heathen like me, cottage cheese.

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Soup - Day 3

As far as I’m concerned, a week of soups must include French Onion. It is one of our favourite soups and one that I have made for many years.
Onion Soup can be tricky though, despite its seeming simplicity. My mother-in-law referred to it once as tasting like beef consommé and there is certainly little point in eating the tinned stuff, which is basically beef stock with some token onion flakes sprinkled in it for good measure.
I have made onion soup without stock and with stock and, providing you cook the onions slowly, over a low heat, you can be guaranteed of a rich flavour that tastes not one bit beefy.
Of course, as far as I’m concerned, the soup merely exists to mop up the delicious Gruyere encrusted croutons that float on the top. As you can see, I like my croutons large. I just get great pleasure from tearing into the bread which has a soggy underbelly from the soup, the strands of cheese drooping over the side of the bowl, to be peeled off with your fingers once the soup has all gone.
Last night I decided to split the basic onion soup into two, making one traditional version and one non-traditional. The non-traditional version didn’t follow much of a recipe. I simply had an idea of filling a baby pumpkin with soup and baking it in the oven. Minimal washing up and many soup bowls do you know you can eat?
I made this second, slightly recherché soup into a creamy version, firstly adding half a teaspoon of Garam Masala for a little spice, then stirring in a generous spoonful of crème fraiche, plus some blue cheese (in this case Roquefort, just because I found it clinging to the back of the cheese dish) for good measure. I also sprinkled over some parsley but I wouldn’t recommend you do this: the parsley surprisingly conflicted with all the other flavours. I suspect that a few Thyme leaves would have served better.
I had little idea how this would actually turn out but we were both pleasantly surprised. The onion soup worked well with the Roquefort (although Paul thought I should have used a little less, to which I concede) and the richness was countered perfectly against the sweetness of squash. A perfect dish for a Winters day. Or for slurping out of whilst watching Battleship Galacticness.
I would suggest that you share it though – mini though it may have been, a whole pumpkin was still too much for me alone.
Here then are the recipes for both:
FRENCH ONION SOUP serves 2
Ingredients:
6 Onions, peeled and finely sliced (I used a variety, red, white and a couple of sweet onions, but you can just use one type)
1.5 Litres Water or Chicken Stock (I used organic stock cubes)
20g Butter
Tablespoon Olive Oil
Dash Worcestershire Sauce
Seasoning
Rustic Bread
Gruyere


METHOD:
Gently heat the Olive Oil and butter in a large saucepan or deep frying pan.
Sweat down the onions over a low heat until they are golden brown and fragrant. This could take up to an hour.
Pour over the stock or water and a dash of Worcestershire Sauce and bring to the boil. Turn heat down to a brisk simmer. Leave for another half an hour, ensuring it doesn’t reduce too much.
Taste for seasoning (it will take quite a lot of salt and pepper) and pour into heat proof soup bowls.
Bob your slices of bread on top of the soup and grate over some Gruyere.
Put under a hot grill and once bubbling and browned, serve.

CREAMY ONION SOUP IN A PUMPKIN – serves 2, very generously
Ingredients:
As French Onion Soup plus
Half a teaspoon Garam Masala
Dessertspoonful of Creme Fraiche
10g Blue Cheese
2 Baby Pumpkins or Squash
METHOD:
Preheat the oven to 200c.
Cook the soup as French Onion soup, except add the garam masala to the onions before you add the stock, cooking for a minute or two to activate the spice. Then proceed as above.
Once you have seasoned the soup to your satisfaction, remove from the heat and leave to cool slightly.
Meanwhile, prepare the squash. Carefully cut the top off, reserving to one side. Scoop out the innards of the squash, removing all the seeds and strandy bits.
Place the prepared squash on a baking tray with sides.
Stir the Creme Fraiche and Blue Cheese into the slightly cooled onion soup and divide between the two squash.
Replace the ‘lids’ or tops of the squash and cook in the oven for about 45 minutes to an hour. Once the squash yields to you pressing it, it’s ready. Any longer and it will collapse and take your soup with it.
Serve in large bowls to catch any spills, with crusty bread and butter.

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Soup - Day 1

Call me crazy but I love watching food cook. I enjoy seeing raw meat turn from crimson to a rich mahogany, I love to see apples caramelise in brown sugar and Calvados and I am always amazed when I watch fish curling up as it broils. I am also fond of watching cheese on toast cook; the rubbery pieces of cheese slowly liquefying and then starting to brown and bubble.
Sometimes I’ll just stand and watch a pan of water come to the boil. Last night I spent 20 minutes gazing into my pan of chicken stock as I watched the slices of garlic bobbing around, the chicken slowly turning a pale ivory colour, the onion slowly disintegrated as the rings puffed up and fell apart.
Don’t panic. I’m not about to start scrawling on the walls with crayons like Paulina Porizkova in in the video for Drive by the Cars.
After a long (very long it seems sometimes), stressful day at work, standing by the cooker watching the fruits of my labour slowly finish off what I’ve started is just a wonderful way to unwind. I am lucky in that I don’t have any distractions at this time of the day. Paul is usually more than happy to sit downstairs and watch Starship Galactica with a sandwich whilst I prepare dinner, so we have that little time to ourselves to unwind. See, Paul watches spaceships and I watch bobbing vegetables to unwind. It’s all perfectly normal.
I know. Enough of your preamble, I hear your cry, yet again. You just want to know what our Day 1 soup was, right? Well, I’m not going to keep you in suspense any longer.
Day 1 Soup was the perfect detoxing soup for a Monday Night, the culinary debauchery of the weekend all forgotten as we sooth our stomachs with the healing flavour of ginger, the stimulant of chili and the diuretic ability of fresh limes. A simple soup that was satisfying without causing the top button of the jeans to be undone: Prawn and Pork Dumplings with Chili, Lime and Coriander in Chicken Broth.
Originally a Rick Stein recipe (from French Odyssey), I had to tweak it slightly to suit our store-cupboard which meant omitting the mint leaves, using a slightly different type of noodle and shortcutting the chicken broth. This was at no great detriment to the recipe however.
At first glance, it appears to be quite simple but in fact it has several facets to it and takes the best part of an hour and a half to cook. Not a big deal since the first hour is spent simmering the stock and, unless you enjoy watching vegetables swim around in water like I do, you can get on with other things whilst this makes its own delicious broth.
So, the first element is the stock, made as regular chicken stock but with 8 cloves of slivered garlic and a nub of fresh ginger. I had originally planned on using chicken stock cubes but I pinched one of the dogs’ chicken wings and used that instead. Just don’t tell them it was me that took it. They are very protective of their chicken wings.
The second element is the prawn and pork dumplings. These are so simple: process some prawns, some pork mince, some shrimp paste, an egg and some salt, form them into little balls and steam them for four minutes until they turn a creamy colour.
The other elements require no cooking: bean sprouts, chopped red chili, chopped spring onion and straight to wok flat noodles (I wouldn’t usually use these noodles but this was all the supermarket could offer me), a good squirt of freshly squeezed lime juice (a crucial component for bringing the dish together) and some fresh coriander leaves, used not as a garnish but as a another important flavour burst. These are all placed in the bottom of the bowls, then the dumplings and then the hot, strained chicken broth is poured over the top, heating the noodles but ensuring everything else retains their nutrients and flavour. Totally delicious.
PRAWN AND PORK DUMPLINGS WITH CHILI, LIME AND CORIANDER IN CHICKEN BROTH serves 4
Ingredients:
For the stock:
2 or 3 chicken wings
1 Large Carrot, peeled,
1 Onion Peeled
8 Cloves Garlic, peeled and cut into slithers
1 Nub Ginger, peeled, cut into strips
1 Stick Celery, cut into large chunks
Some Fresh Thyme Leaves
1 Bay Leaf
3 Tablespoons Nam Pla (fish sauce)

For the Dumplings:
80g Fresh Prawns (I used ready cooked but raw would be best)
250g Pork Mince
Half a Teaspoon Shrimp Paste
Pinch of Salt (not too much as the Shrimp Paste is salty)

And rest of the stuff:
1 Red Chili, chopped into rings, de-seeded if required
2 Spring Onions, cut into half inch slices
100g Flat Noodles
Some Beansprouts
Juice of 1 Lime
Fresh Coriander

METHOD:
Make the broth. In a large saucepan, place all the ingredients and cover with about 2 litres of cold water. Slowly bring to a gently simmer. Do not let boil as this will turn your broth cloudy. Leave to simmer for an hour.
After an hour, strain and let simmer some more until it has reduced to about 1.2 litres.
Once you have strained the broth/stock, prepare the dumplings. In a food processor blend all the ingredients together until they form a thick but not too smooth paste.
Bring a pan with about 2cm of water in it to the boil. Place the dumplings in the steamer (I had to do mine in three lots as I don’t have a steamer, just a colander) and put the steamer over the pan of boiling water. Leave to steam for about four minutes. They will turn white when ready.
To assemble the soup, place some of the noodles, beansprouts, chili, spring onion and coriander in the bottom of pre-warmed bowls. Place some of the dumplings on top and pour over the hot broth. Pour over some fresh lime juice.
Serve and feel very rejuvenated. At least until Pancake Day.

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A Week of Soups. And a Recap. And the Secret to Roasting a Chicken

You read it right. A week of soups ahead. Actually five workdays. I’m omitting the weekend because, well, because it’s the weekend!
The reason for this social and culinary experiment is two-fold:
1) Still on our healthy eating kick, I need to detox Paul from the Sloppy Joes that he ate yesterday (note to Paul: the salad doesn’t make it healthy, it just (admittedly) makes it very pretty) and the Southern Comfort that we consumed Friday and Saturday Night (note to self: corn nuts and Southern Comfort don’t mix).
2) Soup is not just healthy (and sometimes not healthy at all), but nourishing to the body and the soul, it is easy to make and can be filling. But mostly it’s easy to make.
Ok, so that’s more than two reasons but cut me a little slack here, it is Monday! The days of Sloppy Joes are gone now for the week, more is the pity (though Paul had COLD Sloppy Joe mixture on toast for his breakfast today!). Tea and Biscuits replaced by Cereal. Ice Cream binges relegated to...well, I’m only human.
Firstly though, some recaps.
The weekend passed by quietly. No meals out this week but perhaps that’s for the best. On Saturday I made a British traditional meal, Roast Chicken for the main course, with a Victorian style Lemon Curd Trifle for dessert.
After much experimentation, I do believe that I have found the perfect way to roast chicken. I have tried many ways, all involving the insertion of a lemon into the chickens unmentionables (but it infuses the chicken with such moistness and a wonderful delicate flavour, so unlike that of shop bought lemon chickens which taste like washing up liquid) and often a sprig of Thyme and some cloves of garlic. My secret is simple. Firstly, have faith in Nigel Slater. Secondly, use a proper organic chicken. Thirdly, for the first half of the cooking time, cook the chook on its bosom. Logical really; you would cook any other piece of meat on both sides, but this ensures that the tricky leg area is cooked from the underneath first.
For the second half of the cooking, flip the chick over, baste well and resume time in the oven. No tinfoil involved. No remembering to turn the oven up or down part way through. All cooked at 200c. The chicken was perfect: moist and well-flavoured. Of course, the exact cooking time plays the most important role: it is as elusive as a hens tooth: too little and you’ve scared off your guests, too much and you’re just making stock tonight. Lots and lots of stock. This time, however, I must have gotten it right.
The dessert, a lusciously rich but tangy Old Fashioned Lemon Trifle (borrowed from Nigel Slaters Kitchen Diaries) is ideal for the trifle hater. You don’t even have to mention the word trifle. Call it a cold lemon pudding if you will. There is no jam, no jelly and no egg based custard just cream boiled with sugar and thickened with lemon juice. Any custard that eschews eggs is fine by me.
The sponge base is made unctuously tart with lemon curd and the whole thing is topped off with yet more double cream, this time gently whipped and decorated with pistachios and orange zest. Beautiful, quick and simple.

Sunday I wasn’t feeling very well so the lovely, delicate soup I had planned to make for Weekend Herb Blogging was off the menu (good for next weekend though!). This is partially why Paul went crazy eight bonkers with his Sloppy Joes, he didn’t have me to restrain him! All I could manage was nibbling on a Syrup Waffle and an Egg Sandwich. However, I am back on board today and looking forward to the five wildly differing soups that we will be making. I am not going to spoil the fun by revealing my soup menu for the week (mainly because I don't yet have a menu), however, tonights soup will either be clear or creamy. It will be smooth or it will be chunky. It might be sweet, but it will probably be savoury. It might be...ok, ok. It will definitely be soup.

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A Sandwich is just a Sandwich, but a Manwich, that’s a Sunday Meal!

I know a roast dinner is standard fare for Sunday lunch and that to avoid serving lamb, chicken, or beef ribs today is the British equivalent of an American missing church. I also know that in a country seemingly less and less concerned with “family values”, the Sunday Roast is the last bastion of home and hearth. So, it would be a bit stupid for me to insult a great tradition of my host country, but stupid is my middle name!

Roast dinners bore me. It’s not the meat element, or the potato, or the stuffing, carrots, parsnips, Yorkshire pudding, and gravy that put me off. It’s the amalgamation of everything on one heaping plate. Each element individually is great, but I go into a bit of sensory overload when I’m presented with so many things mixed together. I try to isolate the elements and just enjoy them individually, but my taste buds are not adequately refined and the whole mess just tastes like a bland soup.

I think it might have something to do with life experience. To me a roast dinner is something for special occasions. Several dishes prepared sometimes a week in advance all in preparation for a big meal served once or twice a year. The dishes are then placed in the centre of the table and everybody takes what they like, regrets the consumption afterward, but doesn’t mind feeling bloated and horrible because the next event won’t be for another 364 days.

Maybe it’s just the way Freyas family serves the meal. Food is plated up in the kitchen and presented restaurant style to those seated around the table. I’m a huge fan of the buffet and the culinary autonomy represented by this style of dining, so having portions dictated to me is always galling. I’m not as terrible a son-in-law as I may sound though. I do understand that the method used for serving up the in-laws is based on a distinct lack of space and an undersized dining table (antique family heirloom or not, too small for serving five people).

Fortunately, roast dinners have fallen by the wayside with us for the most part. If we do have one, it’s on an occasional Saturday or a holiday. I think secretly my extended family is just as happy with this arrangement as I am. This is in no small part thanks to Freya opening their eyes about the possibilities that food can offer. They are now asking for Jerked Pork for the next meal. These are people who talk about doodlebugs flying over during the war asking for Jerked Pork!

So, what does the husband of a food enthusiast eat on a Sunday when everybody else is having the “special meal of the week”? Since I find myself eating poached sea-bass or prawn tostada Monday-Friday while my neighbours are eating Chicken Tonight and McCain’s oven chips I use Sundays to eat pizza, hamburgers, burritos or maybe even a hamburger burrito pizza (don’t ask!). Collectively, Freya and I eat so much crap on a Sunday that it’s amazing either of us is even alive on Monday morning. And yet, we don’t seem to be suffering any ill effects. (Were my legs this oedematous last week? I don’t remember that vein on your neck being so prominent before.)

I have today planned out. I went to bed thinking about it last night. I started the day with a bowl of cornflakes. I considered a breakfast burrito, but changed my mind because I was still too tired to bother. Freya had tea and biscuits. For lunch I’m going to crack open a two year old can of Manwich. For those of you unfamiliar with Manwich, it’s a tomato sauce with onions, peppers, and seasoning. It’s mixed into browned beef mince and served on hamburger buns, usually with a slice of processed cheese on top. It’s very 1950’s, not very nutritious, but the perfect vehicle to transport me back to my childhood. For school kids in the 70’s this was a staple in the cafeteria. So, I bought a huge can of it on a trip to the US a few years back and I’ve decided finally to eat it. I know I’ll be sad when it’s gone, but I’ll enjoy eating it today. Freya won’t touch it, but then it’s not evocative to her. She’ll have fish fingers, chips and beans I bet.

It’s meals like this that experienced food writers don’t tell their readers about. Food writing is about maintaining an illusion of sophistication. Food writing is about presenting a unified front against Pot Noodles and cheese doodles. Unfortunately, despite the 3000 cookbooks on the shelf telling me that every meal should be made from scratch from ingredients I’ve picked from my own garden just this morning, despite television chefs rightfully trying to ensure that school dinners be healthier, despite politicians cynically taxing foods that make us fat to pay for health care for the obese (while simultaneously denying specific procedures such as hip replacement for the overweight), despite my own tirades against processed foods on this blog in the past, my taste-buds still crave garbage on a Sunday.

I want Manwich for the same reason that everybody else wants a roast dinner, tradition and nostalgia. To me these things share equally with taste in our enjoyment of food. That’s why people say, “just like mom used to make.” That’s why people eat foods that remind them of childhood. That’s why you’ll never stop people eating roast dinners and why I’ll always get a slice of Rocky Rococo pizza when I visit home. This is probably due to our instinct for genetic survival; an innate desire to remain close to those who share our DNA, protect the pack, and ensure mutual longevity. Food was certainly the first concern of our primitive ancestors and it’s not surprising that it still brings the pack together. Enjoy your meal!

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Those Poor Elizabethans...

Shepherds Pie is an old English dish. If you are British you will have always been served Shepherds Pie as a child(or a vegetarian variant of it, if you are a non-meat eater). At Primary School we were served up Synthetic Mashed Potato served on top of a grayish brown meat sauce (origins of meat unknown), padded out with marrow fat peas and tinned carrots. I still shudder at the thought of it. I remember on more than one occasion unscrewing the lid of the ketchup dispenser so that when I went to squirt 'just a little' tomato sauce on my plate, everything was flooded with watered down sauce. "Miss, I can't eat this, it's covered in ketchup!"
My first culinary Get Out Of Jail Card.
The true origins of Shepherds (or Cottage) Pie go back even further than my own schooldays (and that was sometime in the 1980s!), although it is not as archaeic as I had expected. Of course, the Spanish brought potatoes to Europe in the 15th century but those choosy Elizabethans and the so-hard to please Jacobeans chose NOT to utilise the humble potato (or any vegetable for that matter), preferring the higher protein meals.
At some point though, some wily old-timer discovered the joy of the potato and henceforth the joy of the potato combined with protein (i.e. meat). Shepherds Pie came into being in the 1800s, the first official naming of the dish not until the 1870s.
Technically it is not a pie; it doesn' t have a pastry crush and is not baked in a pie tin (although it could be). It is simply a layer of rich meat sauce, topped with creamy mashed potatoes. Whilst you can make this dish as luxurious as you like, it is a one-pot meal that sprang out of the need for frugality. In the olden days, leftover meat from the Sunday Roast would be finely ground to make the saucy layer, made to go further with leftover carrots, turnips, parsnips, whatever.
Whilst researching this dish, I asked Paul if they ate Shepherds Pie in the US, to which he gave me a dubious "yeeeeeah" which means something like "I don't know but I'll say yes because it seems like something we might eat". I don't think he had eaten it until he came to England(Pauls enlightened comment: As Freya knows, my favourite version is one my mom always made the night after meatloaf night: Slice the meatloaf and layer the bottom of a pan. Pour over ketchup. Add a layer of leftover peas. Top with leftover mashed potatoes. Grate Cheddar on top. Bake in the oven. Awesome!).
Actually, a cursory glance on Google reveals any number of transatlantic variants, a scary number of them using the ubiquitous mushroom soup and green beans that Americans seem to love so much, some replacing the potato with noodles, others pepping it up with chipotles.
Do a search of English recipes and they are all much the same as each other, very little wavering from grandmas original recipe. I'm not here to state which is right or wrong. I think that creativity is the mother of invention and all dishes naturally evolve, regionally, culturally and financially.
Our version of Shepherds Pie is for the most part traditional apart from the use of beef instead of lamb. I deviated slightly by using fried pancetta in the meat sauce because I love the flavour it so generously donates to whatever dish it inhabits. Paul was, as usual, in charge of the mashed potato. We had recently seen a Gary Rhodes show where he made Shepherds Pie, treating it like it was a rare deity. He finished off the mashed potato in such a way that Paul and I laughingly mocked, decorating it with the back of a palette knife so that it resembled shingles on a roof.
Suffice to say, that was how Paul finished his Mashed Potato layer off.
And, with a tip of the hat to Gary Rhodes, the final dish was particularly auspicious. The potato had crisped on top but was still fluffy beneath and the meat sauce had dyed the potato with it's oily goodness. And as for the meat sauce? Rich, dense and delicious.
And probably better than a deep fried bears paw.

SHEPHERDS PIE serves 2, generously
Ingredients:
500g Minced Beef (minus one 100g burger pinched by Paul for a snack), not entirely fat free, you need some fat for flavour
1 Medium Onion, finely chopped
1 Clove Garlic, finely chopped
1 Stick Celery, finely diced
1 Carrot, peeled and finely diced
Half a yellow pepper, finely diced
1 Dozen mushrooms sliced
100g Pancetta, cut into cubes
2 or 3 Tablespoons Tomato Puree, Ketchup or Passata
Leaves of a small spring Thyme
Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper
100ml Red Wine
100ml Milk
Dash Worcestershire Sauce
6 Medium Potatoes, red skinned in this case but I think that white would be better
Butter, milk and seasoning
Grated Parmesan
METHOD:
Preheat the oven to 230c.
Gently heat the olive oil in a deep frying pan and saute the onion and garlic until softly translucent. Add the pancetta and fry gently until the fat has rendered down and crisped a little. Take care not to let the onions and garlic burn though.
Add the celery, pepper and carrot. Cook over medium low heat until softened.
Add the meat, mushrooms, and thyme leaves, cooking until the mince is no longer pink.
Pour over the red wine and let reduce.
Once the alcoholic vapours have died down and the wine has all but evaporated, add the milk and simmer until it has reduced once more, about 5-10 minutes.
Add the tomato puree/ketchup/passata, Worcestershire sauce and salt and pepper,
Bring to the boil and add 100ml or so of water.
Turn down to a gentle simmer and leave for half an hour for the flavours to mingle.
When time is up, the fat from the meat will have separated and be sitting on top of the sauce. Do not drain off. Instead, turn the heat up quite high and let the sauce bubble and blip quite fast until it thickens up to a rich gravy.
Pour into an oven-proof baking dish.
Mashed Potatoes (Paul's contribution)
Peel and boil the potatoes until just soft. Drain. Put butter in a pan adding milk when the butter has melted. Season with salt, pepper, AND paprika. Add potatoes back to the pan and mash to the desired consistency.
Using a palette knife, pick up some of the potato and scrape off on the edge of the baking dish. Repeat this procedure until the entire periphery of the dish is covered with potato. Close up the remainder of the pie with the rest of the potato. Working from one end, firmly press the tip of the knife into the potato leaving a semi-circular indentation repeating the process across the dish left to right. Repeat the procedure until the entire surface is scalloped.

(This is a funny story. I was in the process of adding the paprika when I was accosted by Freya. F: "You know I don't like paprika in mash!"
P: "I always put paprika in the potatoes, your mom said you like it that way."
F: "Well, I don't and now you've ruined them!"
P: "You haven't tasted..."
Freya grabs the spoon and sticks it in her mouth.
F: "You're lucky, this time."
What makes the story funny is that we have had this conversation numerous times.)

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Picassos Bream

I enjoy cooking fish. It makes me feel like I’m a competent cook if I can remove fish from the oven, with a flourish, and reveal a moist, flaky, flavoursome dish. I haven’t cooked fish all that often, short of fish fingers or prawns because I’ve always found it to be daunting. Silly really, because if you take the proper precautions – keeping the fish moist during cooking, not overcooking and using the right flavours for the type of fish – you will always have a successful meal.
As you gain experience in the kitchen, you also gain confidence and, more importantly, knowledge of the food you are cooking.
The daily chronicling of my cooking endeavours has also helped me to become more diligent in the kitchen, more adventurous and more conscientious. For someone who has been hitherto unable to keep a journal for more than a week, to keep posting at least five times a week is remarkable. I have previously flirted with all sorts of interests hoping to find something to keep me stimulated for longer than a month: aromatherapy (really!), starting a degree in English, photography, learning foreign languages. All have fallen by the wayside usually because I’m no good or I’m too impatience to learn the basics.
Cooking is different. The results are instantaneous, you get to benefit from those results and you can see improvement on a daily basis.
Don’t misunderstand me. I would loath to be chef or work in a professional kitchen. The pace is too rigid, too hectic. This is why I prefer food writing. I can please only myself, no screaming customers and just the occasional disgruntled family member who might have gotten a hair in their soup. I admire the food that chefs create, tiny, intricate works of edible art that look that they might have been fashioned by Faberge but it’s not food from the real world. It is fairy tale food that only a select few get to eat but that everyone has the accessibility to make. The reason most people choose not to cook in this way is simple – hunger! We want to eat big so we cook for ourselves! I resent paying for a restaurant meal and leaving hungry. Just because something is arranged like a Joan Miro on a plate doesn’t mean it tastes better than a big steaming simple bowl of chilli.

This is what happens when I try to be dainty and intricate---------->
The ramshackle stack that you see before you is my attempt at making a potato, turnip and carrot gratin, using one of those metal cooking rings to mould it. I only made one, my patience rapidly wearing thin. The rest of the vegetables were slung into an overproof dish with the flavoured cream poured over them. I vowed there and then never to produce something so fiddly, so small and so measly ever again. Obviously I did not learn from the Sologa debacle.

As a child I would prepare salads for me and my mum. I would spend ages arranging the food on a plate, sometimes in concentric circles with reds at the top and greens at the bottom. Other times I would produce sunburst effects. Finally, bored with this tinkering of her lettuce, my mother told me to not ‘play’ with the food anymore. If I wanted to arrange my own plateful, fine, but not hers. At the time I was quite hurt because I just wanted the food to look pretty but I learnt a valuable lesson. Salad tastes the same whether it is arranged into a sunburst or not.
Where is this preamble leading, you ask? Well, last night, still on our healthy food regime, I decided to cook the second fish in our freezer (the first being the Bass) – the curvaceous Bream.
I had planned on doing another Asian style dish, using coconut milk, wrapping the fish in some spinach leaves and scenting the whole thing with chili and lemongrass.
By the afternoon, I had revised the whole dish. As usual I wanted potatoes, and I fancied a Mediterranean theme. From here onwards the dish almost made itself.
I prepared a simple tomato sauce, flavoured with a fresh red pepper, some chilli flakes and a pinch of Mexican Oregano. The fish was laid on this gloriously red bed after being stuffed with sliced shallots and some fresh Thyme. On top of that I laid 'scales' of parboiled potatoes and baked the whole thing in the oven. Simple. After half an hour, this one pot dish is ready to serve. Conveniently, as Paul removed the fish, it filleted itself, which was very thoughtful of it, making two nice, meaty (or rather fishy) pieces for us. Each of the three elements infused the dish with their own unique flavours making a meal that we will be repeating again. Soon.
P.S. This constitutes my entry for Waiter There's Something In My...Pie entry, held this month by Jeanne over at Cook Sister. Hopefully the fact that the tail is poking out won't invalidate my entry but aesthetics won out I'm afraid.
PICASSOS BREAM
Ingredients:
1 Bream, gutted, descaled and sprinkled internally with a little salt.
2 Shallots, peeled and finely sliced
Spring Fresh Thyme
Olive Oil
1 Can Tomatoes
1 Red Pepper, sliced thinly
1 Onion, peeled and cut into thin rings
1 Clove Garlic, finely chopped
Pinch Oregano
Pinch Chili Flakes
Salt, Pepper
Pinch of Sugar
Splash of Vinegar
3 Red Skinned Potatoes, peeled, cut into large chunks and parboiled
A little butter
METHOD:
Preheat oven to 180c.
Make the sauce. Gently heat some olive oil in a frying pan or saucepan and lightly saute the onions and garlic until soft.
Add the sliced red pepper and cook until softened.
Pour over the tomatoes, chilli flakes, oregano, sugar, vinegar and season. Cook over medium high heat for 20-25 minutes or until reduced and thickened. Taste and adjust seasoning as necessary.
Whilst the sauce is simmering, peel and parboil the potatoes. Plunge them into cold water once parboiled to avoid them discolouring.
Prepare the Fish: Season the cavity and fill with the spring of Thyme and sliced Shallots.
Once the sauce is reduced and thickened, spread out in the bottom of an oval ovenproof baking dish. Leave to cool for a few minutes.
Meanwhile, slice the potatoes, into crescents to resemble scales or just circles if you're not feeling artistic.
Lay the stuffed fish on top of the tomato sauce, season lightly and layer up the potatoes. Sprinkle a little more salt, a good grind of pepper and dot with butter.
Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes or until a knife point penetrates through the potatoes easily.
After 20 minutes, turn the oven up to 200c and remove the foil to allow the top to brown.
Leave to stand at room temperature for about 5 minutes then serve.

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Blog Party #19 - A Digression From Diet

Today seems like it’s going to be one of those days: it will either make or break the diet. If I can stay strong and stay off the Super Noodles at lunchtime and leave the unopened Green and Blacks chocolate in the bread bin alone, I might just be able to survive until 5 O’Clock without junk food. After then, we have another fishy experiment on the books: Sea Bream cooked in what can only loosely be referred to as Provencal Style. This roughly translates to fish with tomatoes and some other stuff.
In the meantime though, feast your eyes on these tiny beauties, made before we banished cakes and cookies (only temporarily mind, they’re in a box in the basement and can be let out without a moments notice) to the ‘bad’ corner.
An event that I have enjoyed but never taken part in is held by Stephanie of Dispensing Happiness. Every month or so she holds a Blog Party which is themed in various ways. The one interjoining link between all of her parties though is the word ‘Bitesize’. It’s a word I enjoy. Bitesize means you can eat more than jumbo size because they’re much, much smaller. Bitesize also means that things that aren’t attractive normal size, are rendered ‘cute’ by the diminutiveness.
I draw the line at Bitesize Fish and Chip portions (seen at trendy cocktail parties in the late 90s). As Brilynn at Jumbo Empanadas might say ‘Go Big or Go Home.’
I remember the first party I went to as a very small child, maybe 3 or 4, held by my Aunt. I have no recollection of who was there or what the celebration was. All that sticks in my mind is being offered, on a silver platter, some tiny little biscuits with what I thought was segmented blackberries (those segments, I found out some two decades later are charmingly referred to as ‘drooplets’) on some cream. Actually, this was my first taste of caviar with sour cream. I can’t remember if I enjoyed the expensive hors d’ouevre or not but it certainly didn’t put me off caviar although I wouldn’t get to try the black stuff again for 25 years!
But, enough reminiscing. The theme for this months Blog Party is - quite fittingly what with it being Winter and all - Comfort Food. And I got to thinking about comfort food and what makes me cosy. Parties aren’t generally conducive to that Comfort feeling. After all, you’re supposed to have fun, sing too loudly and probably get too drunk. Food isn’t high on the agenda. If you’re English you will remember (or still attend) events where cocktail sausages, sausage rolls, cheese and pineapple on sticks, twiglets and prawn vol au vents are served. The snooty 80s and minimalist 90s did nothing to eradicate this. If you’re over a certain age, you will still be disappointed if you’re not served miniscule prawns in a ketchup and mayo sauce stuffed in a dry puff pastry case.
The first food that came to mind when I thought of comfort was Deep Fried Risotto Balls. I have never made them but I love risotto. It envelopes you in a fluffy blanket of creamy goodness. Frying them only makes this blanket of Italian joy even more covetous.
As you can see, I had a last minute change of heart. When you want comfort – instant comfort – you want chocolate. You don’t want to make Risotto. You want instant gratification. If it has booze involved then even better. Mini Malted Chocolate and Banana Cupcakes with a Baileys Shot decorated with a Malteser garnish seems perfect.
The recipe for the cupcakes was adapted from a Nigella Lawson recipe, taken from Feast. The original recipe makes a full size cake, iced with a delicious malty topping and decorated with maltesers. I have made this cook before and I can vouch for its malted goodness. I halved this recipe and added some mashed banana to the cake batter lest it should be a little too dry. I baked them for about 10 minutes, left them to cool and then decorated them with a sticky, smeary blob of Fluff and a solitary Malteser. They are one mouthful of comfort.
The shot is even easier. Pour the Baileys into a shot glass. Decorate with Maltesers and drink (and eat). Feel instantly better.

P.S. Have a wonderful Valentines Day (and if you're like us and don't celebrate Valentines Day, just have a great day!).

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A Rejuvenating Supper

I know that it appears Paul and I are going the way of the Galloping Gourmet: spending our 30s in a hedonistic haze of roux based sauces, rich puddings, dripping butter and a lot of cheese.
Of course, being British and with a love of French food, I would like this to be the case but we do have such a thing as cholesterol to think about, not to mention expanding waistlines and hereditary illnesses.
So, with that in mind, I have decided that we will be eating (relatively) healthy food for a while. I know, you’ve read this before but this time we are serious. I find myself look at the piles of frozen meat in the freezer, waiting for inspiration that doesn’t seem to come. I finally figured that we’re fooded out. We have eaten too much rich food and we need to strip out eating habits back to basics.
Last night I started our healthy eating regime with some baked Sea Bass and steamed Bok Choi. Paul made some of his famous Chow (Lo) Mein for substance. I had never tried Sea Bass until last night and I was pleasantly surprised by its soft, creamy texture and sweet flavour, enhanced by the ginger, garlic, coriander and lemongrass that I had stuffed into its belly.
This beautiful Sea Bass, a Warholesque fish, was simple to prepare. Taking advice, once again, from Nigel Slaters Kitchen Diaries, I made a sweet/sour/salty/spicy broth for it to poach in, encasing the fish in tinfoil and baking in the oven for 20 minutes. I let it stand, still in the foil, for another 10 minutes, whilst I prepared the Bok Choi, and Paul made his noodles, by which time the fish had reabsorbed much of its cooking juices and was delightfully moist and flaky.
The Sea Bass is not a cheap choice of fish to cook for more than four people, averaging at about £3.80 each (and, whilst Paul and I shared this one, I think we both would have been happier with one each), but it is a special fish, and the perfect choice for people who are non-committal about fish. And, if you serve it in its little tinfoil duvet, it will garner lots of oohs and ahhs from your guests.

BAKED SEA BASS WITH LEMONGRASS, CORIANDER AND LIME serves 2 skimpily
Ingredients:
1 Whole Sea Bass, gutted and descaled
Juice of 1 Lime
1 Stick of Lemongrass
1 Red Chilli, (deseeded if preferred), cut into thin shards
½” Nub of Ginger, peeled and cut into slithers
2 Spring Onions, finely chopped
Pinch Sugar
1 Teaspoon Nam Pla (fish sauce)
2 Tablespoons Soy Sauce
200ml Chicken or Fish Stock
Big Bunch Coriander
1 Clove Garlic, finely chopped
METHOD:
Preheat oven to 170c.
On a clear work surface (I say clear because in our kitchen, I dream of clear work surfaces) lay a piece of tinfoil, large enough to wrap the fish up securely.
Lay your prepared fish onto the centre of the foil. Cut three deep slashes on each side, to enable the flavourings to seep into the delicate meat.
Fill the belly with half of the stick of lemongrass, bashing it quite hard first to release it’s lemony oils, half of the spring onion, chilli, ginger, garlic and some of the coriander just torn off the bunch (no need to chop).
In a small bowl, mix together all of the remaining ingredients, except for the coriander, and pour over the fish, rubbing this beautiful, oily mixture into the slashes of the fish.
Fold the tinfoil, longwise first, so that it meets in the middle and crimp the two sides together tightly. Seal the two shorter ends but leave them facing upwards (to avoid any leakages). The parcel should look roughly the same shape as the fish.
Place carefully on a large baking sheet and bake for 20-25 minutes (depending on the size of fish). Once cooked, remove from the oven but do not undo the foil at this stage. The fish is better if allowed to stand for 5-10 minutes. It will stay warm within the foil and the standing time will improve the texture of the flesh no end.
Serve with some steamed Bok Choi and Noodles or Rice.
A dish that is low fat AND tastes good. If only I could cook like this everyday!

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